Android Quick App: Pulse

A newsreader is something that quite a few of us rely on in our day-to-day life. Digging through the slew of them on the Android Market can be quite a task, so allow me to suggest you start with Pulse. It has all the basics you would expect from any newsreader -- handles rss feeds, links to full stories on the web, customizable sources, and a robust selection of pre-defined newsfeeds to choose from. Pulse just does things a little more visually, and in this author's opinion, a little better. And it's currently discounted to 99 cents. Let's check it out, after the break.

First up is the interface. Rather than a block of text with a thumbnail, Pulse gives you a visual representation, with a small text blurb attached. The developers call this a "mosaic of your news," and I'll have to agree. To stay in step with the good looks and visual interface, when you are browsing a feed, a visual menu stays docked, ready to rise at the tap of a finger to give you a scrolling dock of the articles in that particular feed. Pules makes it easy to share news stories as well, with quick links to Twitter and Facebook sharing right from the menu button.

Maybe the most important feature of a newsreader is Google Reader integration, and Pulse handles that well, too. Sign in to your Google Reader account, and Pulse stays synced so stories read on your Android phone are marked as read on the web, and vice-versa. To top it all off, Pulse is currently on sale for just 99 cents on the Android Market. No idea when it goes off sale, so you might want to hurry if your interested in a visual newsreader for your Android phone.

I tried FeedR and I prefer NewsRob. NewsRob only shows categories that have updates rather than all of them and I prefer the interface of NewsRob. But if it weren't for this article I'd still be hating the web interface of Google Reader Mobile.

Yeah - except that there are times when students are on campus with no service or people are commuting in subways or even flying on planes...that's when apps + cache make a lot of sense and offer something Google's site can't compete with.

It is free but even with the recent upgrade the interface still leaves a lot to be desired and making it an app makes it faster and easier to use. Plus, having all of the data cached locally is really nice.

I like the look of this app, but there doesn't seem to be a way to mark all read....a must if I don't want to tap every single article. Also doesn't seem to bring in pics if you add feeds from Google reader.